Gregory Eltringham, Ready, 2010, oil on canvas

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Gregory Eltringham is a Professor of Painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Georgia. With over two decades of figurative work, Eltringham conveys images that are “closely tied to personal experiences and reaction to outside forces.” His paintings also reflect on “social dynamics, questionable behavior, habitation, and the limits of personal comfort.” Most of Eltringham’s art is unconventional in nature, picturing surrealist hybrids of animals and humans, fetish and kink imagery, and unnatural settings. In Ready, those elements of the fantastic and eccentric are subdued, however, the underlying mysteries of Eltringham’s figures are still more present than ever.

What I am drawn to most in Ready is what I can’t actually see. What are these two figures looking at? Eltringham shines light on the two figures from the left as their eyes glance towards it; this exchange is one of suspense, possible disturbance, or intrigue. The figures are close in proximity together but we know nothing more about them. To me, I picture the man and woman at a pool party; the woman is wearing some sort of halter bathing suit and sunglasses, as the man is shirtless. Nevertheless, this material context does not give us much insight into what is actually occurring.

The woman's lips are pursed as she holds her arm close to her breast, her hand clenched together in a fist. The sunglasses hide the fear or startled nature of her reaction. On the other hand, the man is relaxed with his arms on his hips, and his eyes look up toward the unknown entity in the unseeable foreground. There are thin boundaries that exist between the various energies within the painting. The figures’ glances can be that of intrigue or fear. They could be relaxed or tense, evident in the opposing symbolic representations of the women’s clenched fist and the man’s slouched shoulders. There is light and there is darkness. These paradoxes lend itself to the impossibility of pinpointing what exactly is happening. Has someone entered the party? Maybe, the sunset is a gorgeous hue of pink and purples? Could Aliens be landing in the distance? Or perhaps, a child is about to jump off the diving board exclaiming “Ready?”

Essay by:

Mitchell Famulare  (Class of 2021)
11/18/2022